Filed under: Business, World wide web, Web services

There’s no question that PayPal is one of the easiest ways to send and receive payments for items purchased on eBay. But since the on the internet auction site was founded, users were able to send checks or arrange payments via other methods if they were more convenient. Now all that’s about to change.

Starting in about a month, eBay will stop allowing users to send checks or money orders as payment for items bought on the US version of the site. You’ll only be able to pay using PayPal, ProPay, credit or debit cards (if the seller has an internet merchant account), or pay for the item upon pickup.

In January, eBay will make sure all of these options are easily available in the checkout section. For example, you’ll be able to enter your credit card information to complete a purchase if a seller is authorized to accept credit cards.

eBay tried to issue a PayPal-only stipulation in Australia earlier this year, but regulators ruled that the move would be anti-competitive.

[via Ars Technica]

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Filed under: Before the bell, Analyst upgrades and downgrades, Deals, Magazines, Yahoo! (YHOO), Apple Inc (AAPL), Ford Motor (F), Sirius Satellite Radio (SIRI), Citigroup Inc. (C), Sprint Nextel Corp (S), Costco Wholesale (COST), Amer Intl Group (AIG), Wachovia Corp (WB), Merck and Co (MRK), Economic data, Wells Fargo (WFC), Financial Crisis

U.S. stock futures are higher, indicating stocks will likely continue their wild ride today, but perhaps end the week on a positive note. All this as Wachovia found another buyer, and ahead of the vote in the Home on the bailout plan and payroll data. Economists anticipate payrolls to have dropped 110,000 in September, while unemployment rate should stay at 6.1%. September non-manufacturing ISM will also be released this day.

Wachovia Corp. (NYSE: WB) dumped Citigroup (NYSE: C) and the deal arranged by the FDIC, instead announcing it signed a definitive agreement for a merger with Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) that includes all of Wachovia’s banking operations. WB shares are jumping 66% in pre-market trading, WFC up 2.4%, C down 6.6%.

UBS (NYSE: UBS) - fitting that on a day when payrolls are expected to show such a massive drop UBS stated it is cutting another 2,000 jobs at its troubled investment bank and closing most of its commodities business.

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), however, said Thursday it isn’t considering job cuts. But the comany continues to struggle in the current environment, looking for ways to further cuts costs and restructure operations. So job cuts may be on the agenda after all. YHOO stock set a new 52-week low of $15.54 Thursday, but this morning is up 2.7% in pre-market trade.

American International Group (NYSE: AIG) may attract some attention today as it is due to hold a conference call to discuss which businesses it will put for sale. AIG said it will keep its U.S. property and casualty and foreign general insurance businesses. but sell part of its foreign life-insurance business. Shares are up 8.8% in pre-market trade.

Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) said Thursday it will sell up to $500 million worth of stock to buy back debt owed by its credit arm. While analysts generally think of it as positive as Ford shores up its balance sheet, pricing remains an issue, especially after GE’s current sale. I doubt Kerkorian would come and purchase stock at around $8 now that it’s trading at $4.3.

Merck & Co. (NYSE: MRK) stated Thursday it halted development of its experimental antiobesity drug taranabant because of side effects uncovered in clinical trials.

Sirius XM Satellite Radio Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI) are gaining 3.3% in pre-market trading going from its close of 60 cents to 62 cents per share. After weak automobile sales released Wednesday certainly didn’t help its cause, Sirius is looking to boost its revenue and number of subscriptions with “a range of new programming options that lets subscribers purchase programming from both of the recently merged rival services.”

Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) plans to unveil a new smartphone that’ll also be marketed to consumers, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) has received interest from Latin American carrier NII Holdings Inc. and several private-equity firms regarding Nextel. It’s no wonder shares are up 4.5% in pre-market trade as investors welcome this potential sale.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) will not see the royalties it is paying music publishers go up as the Copyright Royalty Board on Thursday kept the rate at 9.1 cents a song. The board also established a 24-cent rate for ringtones. The rates are set for the next five years.

Goldman Sachs upgraded Costco (NASDAQ: COST) from Neutral to Purchase and added it to its Conviction Buy List.

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Filed under: Business, Windows, Macintosh, Office, Productivity, Web services, Freeware

Thanks Microsoft. No seriously, thanks. As far as I have the ability to tell, the new .docx default document format in MS Word 2007 and 2008 (for Mac) does nothing to make my life easier, but has certainly made it more of a pain. Even though my office predominantly uses Office 2003, our users are starting to receive documents saved in the newer .docx format, and are unable to open or edit them. Since I happen to be running Office 2007 and 2008 on my machine (it’s a Mac with VMWare Fusion for running Windows), I get to play the role of “mister file converter”.

Well, no longer.

Thanks to our pals over at TUAW, I have the ability to now redirect my office mates to Zamzar’s free on the web file converter. We’ve written about Zamzar before, but this is the first I had heard that it supports Office file formats.

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Filed under: Major movement, Deals, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Options, Technical Analysis

Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ - option chain) shares are falling this day after the personal giant announced it has concurred to purchase LeftHand Networks, a small Colorado firm specializing in data storage. Companies are generally depressed when they make acquisitions, but often times an economic downturn offers a great chance to expand. If you think that the stock won’t fall by too much, then now could be a good time to look at a bullish hedged trade on HPQ.

HPQ opened this morning at $44.27. So far this day the stock has hit a low of $41.95 and a high of $44.30. As of 12:10, HPQ is trading at $43.00, down $1.95 (4.4%). The chart for HPQ looks neutral and S&P gives HPQ a very positive 5 STARS (out of 5) strong purchase ranking.

For a bullish hedged play on this stock, I would consider an October bull-put credit spread below the $37.50 range. A bull-put credit spread is an options position that combines the buy and sale of put options to hedge risk in case the stock doesn’t do what you think but still leverage nice returns. For this particular trade, we will make a 5.3% return in just two weeks as long as HPQ is above $37.50 at October expiration. Hewlett-Packard would have to fall by more than 13% before we would start to lose money. Learn more about this type of trade here.

HPQ hasn’t been below $39.99 at all in the past year and has shown support around $41 recently.

Brent Archer is an options analyst and writer at Investors Observer.

DISCLOSURE: Mr. Archer owns and/or controls diversified portfolios of long and short stock and option positions that might include holdings in companies he writes about. At publication time, Brent controls a bullish hedged position in HPQ.

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Filed under: Business, Internet, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Twitter lets you share short messages with the whole world. Yammer lets you share them with your coworkers (or anyone who has an email address on the same domain as yours).

The idea is to use social networking tools to enhance intra-office of intra-team communications. Users can post short messages to let members of their team know what they’re working on, ask questions, or talk about what they saw on TV last night. There doesn’t seem to be a hard 140 character limit on Yammer like there is with Twitter, so you can post longer messages. But since you’re unlikely to be following thousands of users, it should be much easier to keep track of conversations on Yammer than Twitter.

In order to create a Yammer account you need to sign up with your company email account. Gmail, Yahoo!, or Hotmail addresses won’t work. Once you’ve created an account for your company you can invite more users on the same domain or communicate with others who have already signed up.

Yammer’s basic service is free and includes a web client, a desktop client built on Adobe AIR and Blackberry app. An iPhone versions is coming soon. The company charges $1 a month (per user) for administrator accounts. So if you want to be able to monitor your workplace network you’ll have to pony up a few bucks. As Webware’s Rafe Needleman points out, this may be an unsustainable proposition. While I can see some small businesses using Yammer, bigger companies with a few dollars in the bank can easily spend some time building their own Twitter-like application if they want to. I’m not sure why anyone would need to pay for Yammer service.

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